


Counseling Sessions

by foolofatook001



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Andromeda's got to choose what side she's going to be on, Bit of Fluff, F/M, Family Conflict, I genuinely don't know how to tag this, um
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:26:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26208661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foolofatook001/pseuds/foolofatook001
Summary: In which Andromeda Black begins to change her mind, and the threat of war draws ever closer.
Relationships: Andromeda Black Tonks/Ted Tonks
Kudos: 8





	Counseling Sessions

“Oi, you’re Andromeda, right?” The shout came from behind her. “Like the — ”

“Yes, like the galaxy,” she snapped, whirling around. “What do you want?” Then she checked herself, taking a deep breath. A Black did not let her emotions show for the whole world to see. A Black was always self-contained when out in public, and she did not do anything that would reflect badly on the family. “You were looking for me?” she asked instead, in a much more pleasant tone. 

The Slytherin boy stared back at her, looking discomfited. “Erm… Professor Slughorn wants a word,” he said.

“What about?” Andromeda asked, still keeping her voice light and pleasant. Her face was a mask of polite interest.

“Something about potions, I would expect.”

Andromeda’s eye twitched. Her day had not been going well, and a third-year who thought he was the peak of comedy was not making it better. “Thank you,” she said through clenched teeth. “I’ll go find him immediately.”

The boy decided this was the time to beat a hasty retreat — something in her eyes must have warned him. He wasn’t fast enough to avoid her muttered Jelly-Legs Jinx, however, and so she was granted the satisfaction of watching him wobble down the hallway, to the general amusement of her fellow students.

“Ah, Miss Black,” Slughorn said as she stepped into his office. “Lovely to see you, my dear.” He looked terribly nervous, all twitching mustache and tapping fingers. “Ah… I wanted to speak to you about your sister.”

Andromeda’s first thought was _What’s Bella done_ _now?_ followed immediately by _She’s your sister, and anyways it’s probably nothing Mother and Father wouldn’t condone_. “Sir?” she said aloud.

“Yes, yes. Narcissa… she hasn’t been doing well in my classes. I was wondering if you knew if something was the matter? Of course, she’s a very bright girl, all you Blacks are, such excellent students, but all the same…” He trailed off, fixing Andromeda with one beady eye.

“I don’t know, sir,” she replied, both inwardly relieved that it wasn’t about her wayward older sister, for once, yet concerned — it wasn’t like Cissy to let her grades slip. Merlin knew she wouldn’t get away with anything less than “Exceeds Expectations” for any of her classes — Mother and Father would be livid, otherwise.

“Well,” Slughorn was saying, his face bearing a concerned expression. “Do see if you can assist her? You’re quite good at Potions, if I do say so, Miss Black, and I’m sure you can help your sister, should she need it.”

“Of course, sir,” she replied dutifully, though she was curious as to where she was supposed to find the time to help her younger sister when she had hours upon hours of revising for her upcoming OWLs and Bella’s wildness to deal with.

“That’s what I like to hear,” the Potions professor chortled. “Go along, then — well, actually, Miss Black, would you care for some crystallised pineapple?”

“No thank you, sir,” Andromeda said with a smile and an almost-curtsy —  _ A Black should always show respect to her elders _ — as she stepped out of the office. “Good afternoon.”

-0-

“...and now I’ve found out that Cissy’s failing Potions — or at least doing badly enough that Professor Slughorn saw fit to mention it to me,” Andromeda finished, casting her eyes up to the stars that glittered above them.

“That’s a tough day,” Ted said slowly, after a moment.

Andromeda felt her face twist into a grimace. “Tell me about it,” she grumbled. “And I have to revise for my Defense Against the Dark Arts exam! That’s the first one, and it’s coming up soon…”

Ted laughed. “Soon? ‘Dromeda, it’s two months away!” 

She propped herself up on one elbow to glare at him. “You’re not helping,” she told him. “I could just push you off the edge of the tower, you know. Nobody would know. Nobody.  _ Professor, I only do evening patrols with him. How would I know how he fell off the Astronomy Tower? _ ” she said in a high-pitched voice.

Ted laughed some more, and Andromeda had to keep herself from smiling in return. She quite liked his laugh. She wasn’t quite ready to dig into all that entailed, but she thought she could at least admire someone’s laugh.

“I’m glad we’ve made this a regular thing, you know,” she said, a while later. Orion was clearly visible in the sky, his belt glowing brightly. “It’s both functional and fun.”

“Yes. We keep the Astronomy Tower free of couples sneaking out, and I give you therapy,” Ted replied, and she knew he was smiling.

“As if,” she said, and she would have tossed her head if she hadn’t been flat on her back against the flagstones of the Tower, looking up into the sky. “I think we both know I’m the one giving  _ you  _ therapy.”

Ted made a noncommittal noise. “If that’s what makes you happy.”

“ _ So _ , Mr. Tonks,” Andromeda said. “How was  _ your _ day?”

“Well, I think it was all right. Are you trying to be a counselor?”

“This is indeed the Andromeda Black Counseling Service,” she said haughtily. “Do keep in mind that I charge five galleons per twenty minutes.”

“That’s a steep price. Are you that good?”

“Of course I am,” she said with a sniff, though her smile was breaking through. “But just for that, you don’t get any counseling.”

“My loss, I suppose. I’m part of the Andromeda Black Support Group, anyhow. I’m counseling for the counselor.” Ted sat up. “We ought to head in. It’s late, and you’ve got your Defense Against the Dark Arts exam — ”

Andromeda punched him in the arm before he could finish.  _ A Black does not act in such a vulgar way _ , her brain told her. She pushed it away. This was Ted. Whatever it was that they had up here in the Astronomy Tower… it meant she didn’t have to be a Black for a little while. She could just be a girl, who joked about counseling and liked a boy’s laugh.

-0-

Bella joined with the Death Eaters the moment she got out of school. This was a point of some contention among the Black sisters, as Bellatrix wanted every member of the family to join as well, while Andromeda had quietly resolved that she would get nowhere near the Dark Lord and his insane mission. Blood purity was well and good, but this was a step too far. Andromeda was of the mind that one could co-exist with Muggles and Muggle-borns. It worked perfectly well at school — there were even half-blood and Muggle-born teachers (though not many) and everyone was still learning just as well. Ted was a Muggle-born and he was—

She stopped that train of thought before it even left the station. The platform of pure-blood sanctity was one she should not — could not depart from. It was what made her a Black, after all. If she left that behind… who was she?

No one, that’s who. A Black did not abandon the family — and over a Muggle-born, no less. 

-0-

“What do you think of this whole Voldemort business?” Ted asked one evening. They’d managed to land themselves the Astronomy Tower circuit again this year — no one had particularly wanted it anyway — and so were in their usual spots, looking up at the sky. The wind was chilling, but they’d both bundled up and Andromeda had cast a Heating Charm on the stones beneath them. Clouds scudded across the moon. “I mean, he’s really pulling a lot of people together,” Ted went on, after Andromeda didn’t immediately reply.

“Bella is one of them,” she said, quietly, and there was a long, long pause.

“I should have known,” Ted said, and there was something heavy in his voice; no laughter tonight. “I’m sorry, ‘Dromeda.” Another pause. “You — you don’t…” He trailed off, as if unable to finish his sentence. 

“I don’t what?” she asked, shifting so she could see his face. 

“You don’t plan on joining up, too?”

“You really think I would?” she demanded, stung. 

“I dunno, ‘Dromeda! Your whole family is like that, and with your sister already in—”

“I wouldn’t. I won’t. I’d  _ never _ ,” she whispered. “I… I don’t think that’s how we should treat Muggles, or Muggle-borns. But my family…”

There was another long silence. Tonight the stars were not the friendly faces she was used to; tonight they were spies, whispering to each other about her failings as a Black. 

“Andromeda. I’m sorry. I just… I had to know,” Ted offered. 

“I know,” she said to the sky. 

-0-

Bella was twenty and Andromeda had just come of age, and the eldest Black sister — now carrying the name Lestrange — had returned to persuade the middle Black sister to join with her cause. 

“Our numbers are growing,” she told her, her eyes glowing with the light of the true fanatic. “The Dark Lord — he’s going to cleanse the world. It’s going to be glorious. And you’d be there to see it!”

“I’d be there to see it either way, Bella,” Andromeda replied, careful of her words. Her rebellion had been growing in leaps and bounds as her sister continued to lose all resemblance to the girl she’d grown up with. If  _ that _ was what the Dark Lord offered, then Andromeda would stay far away. And now there were two voices in her head: the one that said  _ A Black supports her family above all else _ , and the one that said  _ What do you think is right? _

The second voice sounded quite a bit like Ted Tonks, but Andromeda still was not willing to follow that and all it implied just yet.

-0-

Ted was a year ahead of her, and so there were no counseling sessions in the Astronomy Tower at midnight now — he’d up and graduated and was making his way in the world. Andromeda worried for him, sometimes. He was a Muggle-born in a world that was growing more hostile to them day by day.

It seemed like he knew she’d been worrying over him because for the first week of Andromeda’s seventh year, he sent her a letter every day, arriving at breakfast. Each letter contained a scrap of parchment labeled with a letter — A through F — and when she lined them up in a grid, they fused together and a splash of color burst from the seams and bled out over the whole thing. Together, they created a postcard-sized picture of the Wizarding painter Van Gogh’s  _ The Starry Night _ , with the classic swirling style and the unmistakable outlines of the three witches on their brooms circling round the spire of the church.

_ Ted’s Counseling Services _ , the back of the picture read.  _ Providing Stars Even When There Aren’t Any. _

She smiled, and then she sniffled a little; she appreciated the effort he’d put in to enchant a postcard for her, and with the proper Wizarding version of the painting as well (they’d had quite the discussion on the topic once; apparently he hadn’t forgotten it). She used a Sticking Charm and put it up on the underside of her bed canopy in the dormitory.

She sent him a letter back — it was a chatty one, letting him know about school and the painting and that she missed him a bit. He replied promptly, and thus began a very lengthy correspondence that he jokingly dubbed “Black and Tonks’ Mail-Order Counseling,” once. There was a secret spot in her school trunk where she kept every single one.

Bella also wrote often. She was determined to get Andromeda to “see the light,” as it were, and would tell her — in vague but still descriptive terms — about the latest thing the Dark Lord had done, and the way pure-bloods were flocking to his banner. She gave names of people that she and Andromeda had known as children (and usually were related to in some fashion) that had decided to cast their lot with the Dark Lord. She always concluded with an exhortation to Andromeda to “be on the right side of history” and join with them. Andromeda replied to every one of those letters, but her replies were noncommittal and cautious. She could not afford to alienate her sister; she could not afford to throw her wand in with the Death Eaters. After a reply was written, the original letter would go into the fire in the Slytherin common room.

Ted visited Hogsmeade the first weekend they had, and he and Andromeda spent the afternoon catching up in person. It occurred to Andromeda that it looked a little — a  _ little _ — like they were courting. She found she didn’t particularly care and gave Ted a kiss on the cheek before he Disapparated, behind the Three Broomsticks. Several of the girls in her dormitory commented on her pink cheeks, but she brushed them off with talk of the cold.

Bella came home when Andromeda was off for the winter holidays. She’d warned Ted not to write (though a kiss on the cheek had grown into an evening out and dinner, and that to kisses in the side alleys of Hogsmeade) and was glad of it when she learned her older sister was back.

She was unrecognizable. Oh, she was still Bella on the outside, but there was something twisted and... _mad_ about her that had never been there before. And she was more demanding than ever. 

“Andromeda, you have no excuse,” she said one evening, having cornered her sister in the parlor, alone. “When will you come join me? Join  _ him _ ?” The way she said it made a shiver of revulsion go down Andromeda’s spine — her sister seemed to savor the word in some strange way.

“I must finish school,” she said, holding the mask that made her the perfect Black to her face and willing her emotions back.

“Forget Hogwarts,” Bellatrix scoffed. “It’s run by Muggle-lovers anyway. It’s rotting at the core.”

“I will wait a little while longer,” Andromeda said, calmly, though on the inside, she was trembling.

-0-

Andromeda Black left home and was disinherited two weeks before the end of her seventh year of Hogwarts, and that was all her mother would say on the subject. Of course, rumors immediately began flying throughout the pure-blood community. Some claimed she’d had a duel with one of her sisters and fled. Others posited that she had simply cracked, and run off herself.

No one even considered the truth — it was too far beyond the pale. Andromeda was the often-overlooked middle sister of the Blacks. She was not the outspoken and wild Bellatrix; she was not the beautiful, model child Narcissa. She was simply “the middle girl,” the responsible one, the one who faded into the background.

So who would have ever expected that she’d run off with a Mudblood and go so far as to  _ marry  _ him? No self-respecting Black would even tolerate that sort, much less involve herself with one. It was wild. Unprecedented.  _ Who ever would have thought? _ whispered the shocked mothers.

Andromeda didn’t care much. She had Ted, and she had the Order, and for the first time in her life, she felt safety… and freedom.

_ A Black would never do such a thing, _ the little voice in her head scolded her.

Ah, but she wasn’t a Black — not anymore. 

-0-

Andromeda Tonks stood beside her husband, eight-year-old Nymphadora alongside them, watching the skies anxiously. A silvery streak descended from the heavens, landing to form Minerva McGonagall’s cat Patronus. 

“He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is dead,” it told them, and Andromeda felt joy begin to swell inside her, though it was tempered with some sadness — sadness for her sister, for what would happen to the rest of her family.  _ The right side of history, indeed _ , she thought to herself, as Ted swung their daughter up onto his shoulders, a smile a mile wide filling his face.


End file.
